Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45. Max Hastings

      

       Nemesis

      MAX HASTINGS

      THE BATTLE FOR JAPAN, 1944-45

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      This ebook edition first published in 2009

      First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2007

      Copyright © Max Hastings 2007

      Cover photograph © akg-images/Pictures from History

      Max Hastings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operatin at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007219810

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344093

      Version: 2017-03-23

       Praise

      From the reviews of Nemesis:

      ‘The shocking, little-known story of the war against Japan. Absolutely excellent’

      JOHN SIMPSON, Observer

      ‘Spectacular. Hastings is excellent, unsparing and compelling. Searingly powerful’

      ANDREW ROBERTS, Sunday Telegraph

      ‘A triumph. Put all these elements together—the ambition, insight, sureness of touch—and you have a book of real quality’

      LAURENCE REES, Sunday Times

      ‘An outstandingly gripping and authoritative account of the battle for Japan, and a monument to human bravery—and savagery’

      DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Daily Telegraph

      In memory of my son

       CHARLES HASTINGS 1973-2000

       Epigraph

      War is human, it is as something that is lived like a love or a hatred…It might better be described as a pathological condition because it admits of accidents which not even a skilled physician could have foreseen.

      MARCEL PROUST

      ‘Oh, surely they’ll stop now. They’ll be horrified at what they’ve done!’ he thought, aimlessly following on behind crowds of stretchers moving away from the battlefield.

      Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov at Borodino, 1812

      In 1944, there seemed absolutely no reason to suppose that the war might end in 1945.

      CAPTAIN LUO DINGWEN, Chinese Nationalist army

      Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

Copyright

Praise

       Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

1 Dilemmas and Decisions

2 Japan: Defying Gravity

3 The British in Burma

4 Titans at Sea

5 America’s Return to the Philippines

6 ‘Flowers of Death’: Leyte Gulf

       7 Ashore: Battle for the Mountains

       8 China: Dragon by the Tail

       9 MacArthur on Luzon

       10 Bloody Miniature: Iwo Jima

       11 Blockade: War Underwater

       12 Burning a Nation: LeMay

       13 The Road Past Mandalay

       14 Australians: ‘Bludging’ and ‘Mopping Up’

       15 Captivity and Slavery

       16 Okinawa

       17 Mao’s War

       18 Eclipse of Empires

       19 The Bombs